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The meal inhaler: The future of breathable food

This article was taken from the October issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online

This former teenage dot-com millionaire is betting breathable food is the taste of tomorrow

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Name: Tom HadfieldJob: CEO of Breathable FoodsLocation: London

In the future, you won’t eat food: you’ll breathe it. “It’s a far-out idea. But it’s obvious it’s going to happen,” says Tom Hadfield, the 27-year-old CEO of Breathable Foods. In March, Breathable launched Le Whif, a lipstick-sized tube containing particles of food: inhaling by mouth gives a low calorie taste of, say, chocolate. He sells them at €1.80 for one tube, €5 for three. Hadfield is one of the original teen dotcom tycoons. In 1995, aged just 13, he founded Soccernet, a football-results database, and soon after sold it for £25 million.

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His next venture, Schoolsnet, was valued at £28.75 million -- all before he was 18. The Le Whif device was invented by David Edwards, a Harvard professor who pioneered aerosol medication such as inhalable insulin. Hadfield was his pupil. “Most students read their professor’s books,” says Hadfield. “I wrote a business plan.” Now Hadfield is trying to raise £6.5 million to develop breathable nutritional supplements. “This product is just the start.”